Better Luck Next Time
by stanaticfanatic
Summary: Post-ep for 4x24 'A is for Answers'.


**_A/N: this is my first ever PLL story, how exciting! It's a post-ep, but given that it was the season finale, it could also be speculation for 5x01 _**

**_Disclaimer: yep, I'm -A. Purely speculation, I have no idea what will happen next season!_**

* * *

"Aria!" Came a voice from the just down the hallway.

Spinning around, Aria saw her mom walking towards her. "Mom! Oh god, I'm so glad you're here," she said, wrapping her arms tightly around her moms neck.

"What happened?" Ella asked, she didn't know what was going on, just that the police were looking for the girls and that Alison was alive. They'd been tracked to a location in Philadelphia where gunshots had been fired, Ella didn't know who had been shot yet.

"It's Ali..she's alive," Aria said, sinking onto a chair next to her mom. "We went to meet her, all of us, she said she couldn't come back because it's too dangerous."

"What's dangerous?"

"I..I don't know, she didn't say," she wasn't quite ready to tell her mom everything yet, she needed to speak with Hanna, Emily and Spencer so they could figure out their stories - that's if the police didn't get to them first. "We were being chased and ended up on the roof, Ezra followed us and he..he got shot."

Well at least none of the girls had been shot. "What was Ezra doing there in the first place?" Ella asked.

_Because he's been writing a book on Ali for years which is why he started up a relationship with me_. "He uh, he wanted to speak to me, try and talk things over. When he saw us running, he came up to see if he could help," she lied. She wasn't really sure why Ezra was there, all she could the was that he had caught wind of where Alison was and had followed them to talk to her.

Ella didn't believe her daughter but she wasn't going to press for more details now, she'd let the events of tonight settle and talk to her soon. Just then, a doctor came out of the door to their left.

"How is he?" Aria asked, jumping up.

"I'm sorry, I can't talk about him unless you're family," the doctor told her.

"I'm his girlfriend..please, just tell me how he is?"

The doctor surveyed her for a minute before giving in, "surgery was a success but he's not out of the woods yet, the next 24 hours are critical, we'll know more then."

"Can I see him?"

"I'm afraid not, not until tomorrow. He needs complete rest right now."

"Okay. Thank you," Aria whispered as the doctor walked away.

"Come on, let's get you home," Ella said, leading Aria towards the exit.

* * *

Once they were gone, Aria had retreated to her room. Pulling out her phone, she sent an 'S.O.S - my place' to the other girls and thirty minutes later they were all in her room.

"Look, we don't have long before the police want to know what's going on," Hanna said, "we need to sort out our story, what are we gonna say?"

"Well, they already know Ali's alive - and they're gonna try and prove that we knew she was the whole time," Emily put in, "but now that she's gone again we might be able to say we didn't know."

Ali had run again just minutes before the police had shown up. Quite clearly it wasn't safe for her to her to come back yet, not with A still out there trying to get her and they still didn't know who A was, their latest suspect was Mrs DiLaurentis but they hadn't confirmed that yet.

They knew the police wanted to talk to them about her whereabouts, but Ezra getting shot had brought them some more time and a chance to get their story straight.

"I say we tell them we knew Ali was alive but that it was too dangerous for her to come back because someone is still after her," Spencer suggested and the girls looked at her. "What? We've lied to the police enough already, might as well start telling some of the truth. I'm not saying we tell them everything about A or how Ezra is involved, just that Ali is alive."

"What did you say to your mom about Ezra?" Emily asked Aria.

"I told her he came to talk to me. I don't think she believed me but she didn't say anything."

"Okay, so we go with that story. It can't be a secret to the police that the two of you were together, we'll just say he came to talk things through with you and tried to help when we were being chased," Hanna said.

"And who do we say was chasing us?" Spencer asked. "If we don't tell them about A, we need a cover story."

"Well, given that we don't know who A is, we won't be lying when we say we don't know who was after us, we'll just say it was whoever is after Ali," Hanna said and she could tell Spencer was surprised at her answers. "What? You're not the only one who can come up with good ideas you know."

"I know,' Spencer said.

"Okay, so what do we do while we're waiting for the police to get around to speaking with us?" Emily asked the group.

"I think we need to talk to Mrs DiLaurentis," Spencer said quietly and the other three just stared at her. "Well after what Ali told us, we need to know who she saw hit her and why she buried her own daughter!"

The others couldn't argue with that, Spencer was right, Mrs DiLaurentis had some of the answers to their questions.

"Okay, we'll go in the morning," Aria said, "you all wanna crash here tonight? I don't feel like being alone."

The others agreed and they dragged quilts, pillows and blankets down to the lounge and made hot chocolate, settling in for the night.

* * *

The next morning the girls ventured out to Ali's house in search of Mrs DiLaurentis.

"Wait," Spencer said as they were about to turn the corner onto the right street, "look," and she pointed to the house.

The girls followed her gaze and noticed that the DiLaurentis house was swarming with police and tape had been out up to secure the area.

"What do you think is going on?" Emily asked.

"Maybe they're searching the house again now that they know Ali is alive.." Aria suggested.

"Well, only one way to find out " Hanna said, walking towards the house and after a few shared glances, the others followed her.

Spotting Detective Holbrook, Hanna walked over to him to ask what was going on. Just as the others caught up, they heard his reply.

"Mrs DiLaurentis' body has been found," he told them, "we think she was killed last night. If you could all stay here, we've been needing to speak with you anyway. I'll be back in just a minute."

As he walked away, four message tomes chimed at the same time and the girls shared glances before pulling out their phones and reading the message in unison, "you almost had me, better luck next time, bitches. -A".

* * *

**_A/N: I'm one of those who craves reviews, so please let me know what you think!_**


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